


built this house on memories

by modernpatroclus



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Temporary Amnesia, can't catch a break, poor neil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-06 18:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6764368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernpatroclus/pseuds/modernpatroclus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: OMG when i was reading ur last andreil fic i started thinking "okay but what if neil woke up and didNT REMEMBER ANDREW" CAN U MAKE THIS HAPPEN I WILL PAY U</p><p>Or: Neil gets amnesia and can't remember anything past the night he was drugged in Columbia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lonely moments just get lonelier the longer you're in love

**Author's Note:**

> All titles are from "House of Memories" by Panic! at the Disco  
> I hope you enjoy your suffering !!!

It was only a matter of time before another life-threatening tragedy befell Neil.

From the time that Andrew gets the phone call that Neil is in the emergency room, to the time that he spends next to Neil’s unconscious post-surgery form, Andrew alternates between wanting to throttle Neil for going for a run at three in the morning, to berating himself for ever letting Neil leave his side.

Neil had been stressed for the past few weeks, trying to corral the Foxes into the cohesive unit they’d been at the end of the previous year. But two of the recruits are giving the late Seth a run for his money with their antagonism, and Neil has been – stupidly, in Andrew’s opinion – shouldering all of the blame and responsibility.

Running was still his go-to coping mechanism, ingrained too deeply from years of it being his only option. So Andrew didn’t find it odd when he woke up a few hours ago to Neil’s empty bunk in the dim early morning moonlight.

Andrew only wasted his breath once to warn Neil that he’d end up a speed bump if he didn’t start wearing something a little brighter than faded tees and sweats. Neil had rolled his eyes at the time, but after that he’d started running in his orange Palmetto windbreaker, and that had been the end of it.

Until tonight.

A drunk driver had been flying down Perimeter road, and he’d been too wasted to comprehend the orange blur before he’d swerved off the road, right into it.

Neil was lucky to not have been killed on impact, the doctor said, but Andrew wasn’t comforted. Neil is in a coma, and he might never wake up. There was nothing they could do but wait.

If this is luck, Andrew would hate to know misfortune.

* * *

When the results of his brain scans come back, the doctor reports signs of potential problems, but they’re not sure exactly how Neil will be affected.

Head injuries are tricky, the doctor tells the Foxes, who haven’t left Neil’s bedside. “There is only so much that we can do.”

This time, it takes half of the Foxes to hold Andrew back from strangling the doctor. “Fix him,” he snarls, a threat to the doctor and a promise to the unconscious, battered boy all in one.

They do fix him, but they’ve glued him back together and some things have slipped through the cracks. Those things being his memories.

Neil wakes up, but he’s forgotten the past year. The last thing he remembers is That Night in Columbia – the night when Andrew drugged him and Nicky kissed him and everything was too bright.

To Neil, this all feels like it happened the night before.

“Is that why I’m in the hospital?” he demands, the cold animosity the team hadn’t seen for months making them flinch.

They had expected Neil to not be okay; anyone with eyes could see that he was always far from it. And after what his father did to him in Baltimore, even Neil hadn’t been able to spin his “I’m fine" lies for a while.

But this Neil is the same one they’d met nearly a year ago: the one who flinched away from Wymack and stared at Kevin far too often, and thought that trust was the equivalent of handing someone a loaded gun.

This Neil is not a Fox; this Neil is a runaway.

This Neil thought Andrew a sociopath and a liar. This Neil would bolt in a heartbeat if he learned how much Andrew and the rest of the Foxes knew about Neil – about Nathaniel.

Andrew doesn’t answer. He tears his gaze from Neil’s face – awake, for the first time in days, but so wrong – and stands, shouldering past Allison and Kevin in the doorway, and out of the room.

He can’t be in there right now. Not when everything is so _wrong_. Not when Neil is looking at Andrew like he’s the last person on Earth Neil would tell his secrets to. Would _trust_.

Everything good between them that took so long to build is completely erased for Neil. Everything good between them is in pathetic shambles before they’d even finished the foundation.

The door opens, and Kevin stumbles out into the hallway behind Andrew. Andrew ignores him.

Whatever his intense relationship with Kevin was before – before _Neil_ – things are different now. He’d nearly choked Kevin to death when Neil went missing and Kevin told them why. They still have their deal, but Andrew also has Neil in his future – _had._

Andrew cares about few things in life: a handful of deals and the people he made them with.

But Neil is different, because Neil no longer has a deal with Andrew. Andrew cares about him because he’s _Neil_. (Not that Andrew would ever use the word “care” while referring to himself.)

But Neil has memories of keys, of kisses on rooftops, of being taken care of and put back together after being tortured. _Neil,_ who thinks _you were amazing,_ not _you drugged me and_ _I don’t trust you_.

Not this Neil, who doesn’t truly believe that he’s worthy of a permanent identity, of a home, of a family.

They’re alone in the room now, Andrew and Neil. Wymack had kicked everyone else out at Neil’s request (request really being the nurse kicking them out following Neil’s panicked demand and a spiking heart rate). Coach himself is standing just outside the room’s cracked door, near enough if he’s needed but far enough the two can talk without being eavesdropped on.

Neil is studying Andrew with a narrowed glare, and it’s _wrong_ because this is _Neil._

Andrew lets him look, waits for him to speak.

“You said I trust you now. What do you know? Other than what you learned when you looked through my stuff?”

If Andrew were anyone else, he would flinch at Neil’s accusation. Instead, he meets Neil’s gaze with a calm and bored one of his own. “Everything. Your real name and parents, the truth about your connection to Kevin and the Moriyamas.”

Neil’s eyes widen for only a moment before he schools his features. “Tell me everything that I don’t know.”

Andrew does. When he finishes, Neil looks noticeably more alarmed.

“My father isn’t dead. I don’t believe you.”

“Why?” Andrew asks. He answers his own question before Neil can interrupt. “Because you think he’s not that easy to get rid of. I know; we’ve had this conversation.”

Neil’s jaw tightens, and it pulls at the burn scars on his cheek. _He hasn’t seen a mirror yet,_ Andrew notes. That should be fun.

Neil is starting to panic again, his heart rate being announced to the room.

“Neil. You were the only liar in here. I never did.” Andrew is the calm to Neil’s gathering storm, steady where Neil falters. It helps lower his heartrate enough that the beeping quiets down by a fraction.

But Neil still won’t accept any of this. “You pretended to be Aaron when you picked me up from the airport.”

“No, I let you think I was Aaron. I never said that I was.”

He’s right, and it frustrates Neil, who pulls at his hair because he can’t run. Not yet, anyway.


	2. I think of you from time to time (more than I thought I would)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil can't remember the moments that turned him from a runaway into a true Fox. So what does he do? He runs.  
> But he's halfway to obscurity when his past starts to catch up with him.

Neil doesn’t let any of them in to see him after Andrew told him everything he couldn't remember, and it’s only after Neil’s released from the hospital that Andrew finds out.

It happens one day after practice, a week and a half after Neil woke up.

They’re about to head to the locker room to shower when Wymack gets a call from the hospital.

“What do you mean _gone_?” Andrew hears.

He’s grabbed the phone and got it up to his own ear before Wymack can even react.

_“His bed was empty this morning. The premises are being searched again, but we don’t think he’s still here.”_

“He’s not,” Andrew growls. Neil is a flight risk; he could be anywhere by now.

Andrew hangs up without another word. Wymack throws up his hands in exasperation. “Dammit, Minyard! What did she say?”

“That he ran. He’s gone.”

Matt interjects then. “Like, _gone_ , gone? Like, _on_ the run again, gone?”

Andrew scowls impatiently. “Yes, that gone. He doesn’t remember any of us, and he didn’t believe me when I told him about his father. He doesn’t trust me. He has no reason to stay.” Andrew turns away, already heading for the locker room to change out.

“Where are you going, Andrew?” Wymack asks.

Over his shoulder, he replies, “To the airport. He’s probably out of the state by now.”

* * *

He wasn’t at the airport by the time Andrew got there. Not that he actually expected Neil to be.

He knows firsthand how good Neil is at quick getaways. And he’d probably been planning this one since the moment he first woke up in the hospital.

Against all logic, Andrew still tries Neil’s phone. Of course, he doesn’t answer. He probably ditched the thing first chance he got.

He’s out of options. He knows Neil frequented small towns when he was on the run, but they never talked about specific places. He wouldn’t know where to avoid because he’d already been there. He doesn’t know where to start.

For the first time in his life, Andrew is out of ideas. He’s not going to flit across the country on planes to look for Neil when he knows how small the chance of finding him like that actually is.

So he throws himself into two things: sightings of Neil on the internet by some rabid Exy fans, and Exy itself. The other Foxes notice, but they don’t say anything. They’re just as worried about Neil as he is, and between the loss of Neil and struggling with the new recruits, the team is a mess. Luckily, it’s summer, so the season hasn’t started yet, and Andrew doesn’t have to worry about classes.

But after nearly a month of nothing, he’s getting volatile.

The others avoid him as best they can, and Kevin shuts himself up in their room at night with headphones, rewatching old games for the thousandth time. Andrew continues his internet searches, each one bringing him closer to throwing the damn computer out the window. But no closer to Neil.

* * *

It starts with the migraines.

Neil is in New York City when they start. He used to frequent small towns, but with his fame from the Foxes, he thinks that now a big city approach may be the best. So he went to the biggest one he could think of.

He’s not staying long, though. He collected some money his mother had hidden a couple hours away from the city, then set about getting new papers. As soon as they’re done, he’s leaving the States for good.

Just long enough to get a new identity.

But then the migraines start.

They don’t last long at first; a pang here, a throb there. He’d been dealing with those small irritants since waking up in the hospital.

But when he wakes one morning with a constant pulsing every time he so much as turns his head, Neil is a little alarmed. He knows he should’ve waited until the doctors cleared him – or at least started talking about the “near possibility” of it – to take off.

But Neil inherited his father’s temper, and with it, his impatience. And his mother’s paranoia. He has already spent far too long with the Foxes. And he refuses to believe that Andrew is right about his father being dead.

 _It can’t be that easy._ In no world would Neil be able to just wake up one day, and his father would be _gone_. Amnesia or no, Neil’s life doesn’t work that way.

He had to get out of there. So what if he didn’t have a couple more days of bedrest in a hospital bed? He’d be able to rest better once he was gone.

But the migraines _don’t go away._

He doesn’t have internet access because the public library would be too big of a risk, and his flip phone didn’t have it either. Not that that would matter; he’d ditched the thing back in the hospital dumpster.

Neil doesn’t know how to make the throbbing in his head go away, and it’s making the process of a quick getaway much slower than it should be. He’d had it down to a science at one point, but that was before head injuries and Class I sports fame.

But Neil is nothing if not stubborn, and he won’t go back. So he stays in New York just long enough to obtain all the necessary documents and dye his hair a totally different color than it’s ever been. (It takes longer than dying it brown, because bleach is a whole new beast that Neil has to figure out. It’d been a horrible orange for a few days before he’d gotten up the motivation to try again.)

Within a month, he’s boarding a plane to Ireland.

The plane has hardly left the runway when Neil falls asleep. He’s exhausted; from dealing with the men creating his new documentation, to the constant checking over his shoulder for someone – anyone – to recognize him, to the constant throbbing in his head at said head checks.

Neil has barely slept more than two hours at a time since leaving the hospital. So when the plane begins the process of takeoff, he’s drifting to sleep by the time they’re in the sky.

But that’s when the dreams start. They’re flashes, brief images he can barely comprehend before switching to the next. He thrashes in his sleep, brows drawn together in confusion.

He sleeps for no longer than an hour when the dream morphs into a scene of him and one of the twins sitting together on the roof, legs dangling off the edge and cigarettes dangling off their lips. Neil is leaning back on an arm that’s pressed up against the twin’s armband-clad one.

Andrew looks as bored as he had when Neil had woken in the hospital, but he grips Neil’s shirt and whispers something, to which Neil nods and leans in.

Neil jolts awake as soon as their lips touch. Chest heaving, he touches shaky fingers to his lips. He’d half expected to find them swollen, and when they feel normal he shakes his head to clear it.

It was just a dream; Neil doesn’t swing, and as far as he knows Andrew is straight. Besides, Andrew drugged him. Things have changed since what Neil remembers and the present day, but Neil has no memory of any of it. Neil has to go off of what he does know, and that knowledge has Andrew at the bottom of Neil’s list of Foxes he’d be willing to kiss.

There’s a voice in the back of Neil’s mind urging him to remember who was at his bedside when he woke from a coma, but he willfully ignores it and pulls the shade down over the plane window.

* * *

As Neil stands after the plane has landed, he stumbles and nearly collapses right back into his seat. A wave of black overtakes his vision and he has to clench his eyes tight and clamp his teeth together to fight the wave of nausea rolling through his stomach.

Neil barely manages to make it off the plane before he’s bent over the nearest trashcan, dry heaving and clutching the cold metal edges in a losing battle against gravity.

Eventually he’s able to stand up straight. He thinks someone asks him if he’s alright, but he can’t understand the words through the pounding in his head. He nods and wipes a hand over the back of his mouth, then stumbles over to the nearest brick wall. He leans against it with his aching head in his hands.

The dreams had continued incessantly the whole ride, no matter if he was asleep or awake. He hadn’t paid enough attention when the doctor was describing how his memories would come back, but Neil doesn’t need a medical degree to realize that he wasn’t simply dreaming. He was remembering.

He slides down the wall with his duffel white-knuckled in his hands and tries to sort through the nonsensical flashes and film-like scenes.

He’s hit with the memories all over again: being tortured by Riko and Lola and his father, his father’s death, beating the Ravens, having a family with the Foxes and a home in Andrew. The knowledge that he’s truly free for the first time.

It hits him like a tidal wave, and he’s drowning because it’s _real._ All of it is _real,_ it’s _his life._ He finally escaped his father and is truly living for the first time, and not just surviving.

He chokes on a gasp, the realization at once both overpowering and freeing.

When he stands, he’s still shaky, but the thought of going home gives him the strength to stumble his way over to a payphone.


	3. soft hearts, electric souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Neil disappears from the hospital, Andrew searches furiously for him, to make him remember and bring Neil home. Neil, in the meantime, has just regained his memories - minutes after getting off a plane in a foreign country.

A month after Neil disappeared, Andrew’s at his computer looking for any sightings of Neil. He’s about to fall asleep right there at his desk when his phone rings, an unfamiliar number lighting up the screen.

He hates himself for the flare of hope that he feels.

_Fuck you, Josten. Fuck you for getting hurt. Again. Fuck you for making me care so much and fucking leaving._

He only gives himself a few seconds to seethe in these thoughts before he tamps them down, answering the phone.

“Hello.” His voice is dull, even more devoid of emotion than before Neil left.

“Andrew,” breathes a familiar voice. In contrast to his own, the single word holds so many emotions – relief, confusion, fear.

Andrew feels that damn hope again. “Neil,” he says, carefully. If he messes this up, he could lose contact with Neil again – permanently.

“Andrew, I remember everything,” Neil says, the words coming out in a breathless rush. “I was on a plane, and – and I don’t know, it all just came back to me.”

Andrew freezes. “On a plane. Where the fuck are you?” _Gone. Gone, gone._

“Dublin. I just landed.”

“Dublin?” he parrots. He wants to be angry. He wants to hate Neil for running, for putting him through this. For the third time, Neil has slipped away and disappeared. One of those times, he came back half-dead. This time, he’d been half-dead _before_ he disappeared.

It should be so easy to hate him.

But for whatever insane reason, Andrew can’t. He knows that that’s not what he feels towards this idiot. Still, he says, “349%.”

Neil chokes on a laugh. “God, Andrew, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t remember you – any of it. It was just . . .” _Gone,_ Andrew supplies mentally. Neil lets the sentence hang there. “I’m so–”

Andrew cuts him off. “Don’t. Stop fucking apologizing when it’s not your fault. It’s making me want to kill you more.”

He knows Neil nods then, can hear the sound of static as the speaker rubs against fabric. God, Andrew wants to hate him.

“When can you get a flight home?”

“Home,” Neil whispers to himself, for the first time sounding as far away as he is. “I dunno. I’m gonna check. Um. . .” There’s the sound of shuffling again. “Okay, no one’s waiting for the payphone. Everyone’s got cell phones, I guess. Don’t hang up.”

Andrew holds back a sigh. When Neil comes back on, before he can say when his flight is, Andrew asks, “Where’s your phone?” already knowing the answer. This, he can be mad about.

Neil sounds guilty when he says, “Ditched it. I didn’t know how long I’d had it, and there were contacts so I knew everyone had the number. Couldn’t risk it.”

Andrew rolls his eyes. “You are a fucking mess.”

“Noted. Anyway, there’s a flight that leaves in an hour. There’s a layover, but I should be back by noon.”

“Try not to fuck anything else up before then,” Andrew says in lieu of a goodbye.

* * *

Andrew barely sleeps that night, somehow even worse than he’d been for the last month. He usually passed out from exhaustion, but tonight he’d forced himself to sleep in his bunk and actually get some rest before going to get Neil.

He’d called Wymack as soon as he got off with Neil, and Wymack let him off from the next day’s practice immediately. He needed to do something to pass the time until Neil landed, and sleep seemed the obvious option.

But sleep was for people who didn’t have Neil Josten to worry about.

He tries to pass the time on the roof, but without Neil there he finds he’s not willing to put up with the dizzying height.

Eventually, he finds himself waiting at Neil’s gate. He has to stand on his tiptoes to be able to see when people flood in from off the plane. But it hardly helps, and he only sees Neil two seconds before Neil is in front of him.

Remembering the blue of his eyes and actually seeing them makes Andrew realize how little justice his memory does to them. They’re burning into his, full of the same mixture of emotions he’d had last night on the phone.

Neil doesn’t touch Andrew, and he doesn’t ask to. There’s a hesitance in his eyes that Andrew hadn’t seen in months.

“Yes or no?” he whispers, so that Neil will know that it’s okay.

Neil breathes a sigh of relief. “Yes,” he sighs, nodding. “Yes.”

Andrew wastes no time in pulling Neil to him by a hand on the back of his neck. They stand like that for a few minutes, motionless in the sea of people hurrying around them.

Andrew pulls away and just looks at Neil. He wasn’t sure what hair color to expect this time. It sure as hell wasn’t dirty blonde, lighter than he’s ever seen it. It pisses Andrew off that Neil can somehow look _that good_ with practically every hair color, but he does.

Neil bites his lip, sheepish. “I had to do something different after being in the media for so long. I’d never gone blonde before.”

“I hate you,” is all Andrew says. He yanks Neil forward by the front of his hoodie and smashes their lips together. It’s messy and desperate, and when Andrew pulls away, Neil is panting.

Andrew wants to punch him, for the hair and the amnesia and the running, and for all the other shit that he knows he can’t blame Neil for.

Neil leans his forehead against Andrew’s, lips parted against Andrew’s. Everything about Neil is tired, faltering, and Andrew knows Neil is seeking stability from him. He gives it without hesitation.

* * *

When practice lets out, Andrew knows they’ll have to see everyone else. But for now he leads Neil up to the roof for a few minutes of solitude.

They’re both silent for the first few minutes. Neil doesn’t know how to apologize when Andrew doesn’t do regret. After a few minutes, Andrew takes care of it for him.

“You ever run like that again and I’m not looking.”

Andrew doesn’t lie, so Neil knows he means it. The only reason Andrew looked this time is because Neil didn’t know who he was anymore. If he had simply gotten scared and left, Andrew would have let him go. It wouldn’t have been easy, and he’d never have forgiven Neil, but Andrew wouldn’t force Neil to stay. And he wouldn’t beg after him either.

Neil swallows, and Andrew watches the movement of his Adam’s apple from his peripherals. “367%,” he mutters.

Neil turns suddenly to Andrew, straddling the ledge of the roof with one leg dangling off the side. “I won’t leave again. As soon as I remembered, I wanted to come back. I _needed_ to. I meant it when I said I was tired of running.” His voice is desperate, pleading. He needs Andrew to know.

“Good.” Andrew shifts closer, puts a hand on the back of Neil’s neck.

Neil leans forward, pressing his forehead into the space of Andrew’s collarbone.

Andrew kisses Neil like he wants to bruise Neil’s lips, and never has Neil been so glad to not be on his feet. He knows his knees would give in with the weight of it all. He’d relived every trauma, every overwhelming happiness of the past year, all in the span of a few hours.

He wouldn’t trade them for anything. Without them, he wouldn’t be Neil Josten. He’d still be Nathaniel, an identity-less runaway completely alone in the world.

They were as grounding as they were draining, and Neil feels a bone-deep exhaustion he hadn’t felt in months. He breaks away from Andrew’s mouth and slumps against him. Andrew holds Neil up without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the ending was satisfying! It was great fun suffering with you all

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
